Gandhi was not God.'' It doesn't actually take a Kamal Hasan to declare this. But we haven't had many like the one who has dared say this, despite there being little to disagree. Gandhi, with his saintly demeanour and disarming smile, has all along been an unassailable demi-god for millions. A reason why any attempt to explore the ``truth'' about him in a non-Gandhian perspective almost meets with a ``violent'' (by Gandhian standards) reaction. And most ironically when there is little or nothing of him that we have retained. It won't be long before we realise that we have missed the essence of Gandhi as much as Gandhi has missed ours.How else would you explain the total absence of what are known as Gandhian values from our national as well as personal lives? As also our unimpeachable reverence to him irrespective of that? Whose failure is this ours or that of Gandhi? Uncomfortable questions have equally uncomfortable answers. It's time we accepted them in the right spirit.That Gandhi is no more relevant to us as much as he was before Independence has been amply pro-ved by our giving him a go-by from almost all walks of our national life. But even before Independence, did we really follow him? Or did we simply follow him? It was quite naive of us to have seen him as the infallible Mahatma rather than as an extraordinary leader vulnerable to ordinary failures. We need here only to recount, and not discuss, that many within the Congress often differed with Gandhi's thoughts and actions, but finally bowed to the wishes of the man who had principally accepted others' right to differ. Those who did this by remaining outside the Congress have, arguably, little or no place in our collective memory. There also were the likes of the one played by Kamal Hasan who ends up realising Gandhi's greatness.Thus, Gandhi became the single largest icon whose presence dwarfed many other stalwarts irrespective of whether they belonged to his camp or were at the other end of the political spectrum. The spiritual demeanour of the saint from Sabarmati had created a wonderfully overwhelming effect. The result was that Gandhi's was accepted as the single most credible way to go about the task.Despite this, Gandhi did face bold criticism from many quarters. Its most strident manifestation was seen at the time of Partition when the media, too, generally expressed strong reservations about the stand he took. That could well have paved the way for a more free and realistic appraisal of Gandhi, but the sympathy wave generated by his assassination finally and firmly placed him as a hallowed messiah.That is a reason why his criticism is generally unwelcome. Th-at's fine. But do we qualify to stand for Gandhi, whatever he was? Is it not a fact that we dumped Gandhi at every opportunity? It is a sad irony that the worst violence witnessed by this country took place when Gandhi was alive.Post-Independence, the most practical Gandhian idea of rural reconstruction was overshadowed by the highly ambitious socialist economy dream, thanks to Ga-ndhi's most beloved disciple, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. So, where is Gandhi in ourselves? Today we are so far removed from him that our ritualistic chanting of his name is worth really nothing.Perhaps our society, steeped for ages in poverty and illiteracy, was not yet in a position to raise itself to the height Gandhi wanted it to. Moreover, after his departure, there was no one who could have steered it in that direction.Still, whether it was our failure or that of Gandhi is a question open to debate. But it sure is true that in the given space and time both of us have erred somewhere in judging each other. And that has brought us apart.
